As the College of Technology’s December 2012 graduates complete their time at Purdue, we are profiling a few and finding out their future plans and how they arrived at this point in their lives. Commencement was December 16, 2012.

Benjamin R. Cox, West Lafayette, Ind. In Process Control Professional Staff for Subaru of Indiana Automotive in Lafayette, Ind.

As part of their senior design course in aviation, three students undertook a project to design an electronic personal restraint system for NASA astronauts to use in microgravity environments. The design, created by Kevin Tait, Justin Lewis and Justin Hickel, would allow an astronaut to walk along a surface while being electromagnetically restrained to it. The system would also release the user in the event of power failure.

Daniel Golladay, Whitestown, Ind.

My major

I love this stuff. I love working with my hands and being elbow deep in solvent, cleaning parts. It was what I was meant to do. The easiest explanation is I work on them and pilots fly them. I plan on being an airplane mechanic; I keep them running. They work you up the chain from your first year to getting an Airframe and Powerplant certification.

Henry Zhang’s Multidisciplinary Design Laboratory (MDL) is home to the state’s largest self-built 3-D printer. In fact, it was used to create many of its own pieces.

A 3-D printer is one of the necessities for additive manufacturing. It gives manufacturers the flexibility to produce parts with complicated features and with a lot less expense than casting a part. It is also a convenient way to make a prototype, directly converting a CAD 3-D-modeled design. It has many applications in future manufacturing industry.

Senior design students tackled these projects in ECET 49700 (Project Design and Development, Phase II), which is offered each semester as a capstone course for electrical engineering technology majors.

Five students were honored during the public display of the projects May 4: